Opinions sought about how you would feel about one of the worst things you could imagine actually happened and noone told you.

[Lauriefairycake]

So, in this scenario you're divorced and you remarry. Fastforward ten years and most people in the family know your husband abused your daughter (his step daughter) sexually when she was a child but noone ever told you.

How would you feel about this

Currently trying to persuade someone to tell her (she is lovely and greatly loved) but I am not in the family.

no I don't know if that follows.
why would bringing it into the open make resolution more likely?
it seems to me that it will just cause more damage and may cause a rift between the SIL and her mother.
whatever way you look at it, it will cause more pain and hurt.
and I am not sure if I was in the SILs position I would see much of a benefit to outweigh all those risks

Hmmm. As a wife and mother I think I would have to know, but how devastating. Also I agree with posters who've said that other children may be at risk from him now.

There are risks in telling though. A sort of similar thing happened in my family and the wife just could not accept that it was true and never has. In that case the children involved were the wife's nieces though.

As a mother, I would want to know.

As your SIL - I can understand her reluctance to bring it out into the open... Let sleeping dogs lie and all that BUT if she is hoping/planning on having dc's in the future and her mum is still married to this guy THEN things become very awkward. Its no longer just in the past iyswim.

Whenever it comes out it will be horrible but as mentioned before, I really wish I had dealt with it before I had dd. It was even worse trying to deal with the fallout when dealing with all the hormones, emotions and exhaustion of having a new baby. It also "tainted" my first few months with my dd

harpsichorcarrier - i think that yes it would cause more pain and hurt, but that would be dissipated. among several people who could draw together to make sense of things and support each other. otherwise, the sil may carry very uncomfortable feelings for the rest of her life, and if she cannot express those feelings to the people directly involved, they may mainfest in ways that are less healthy for her as an individual. i certainly think it is the sil here that is the person who deserves to make progress, but that may take a long time, and it may cause hurt to other people. but that's not her fault is it.

just wanted to add that I too was in a vaguely similar situation although I pretty much knew that my mum wouldn't believe me as I had already told her when I was a teenager and she had told me not to mention it again/'he would never do that' blahdeblah... After that initial failed confrontation I told no other family members and tried to forget about it until I had a daughter and I felt I had to do whatever I could to protect her. I re-confronted my mum and dad (the abuser)and told my brother and sister for the first time. The outcome is that I no longer see or speak to my dad, my mum denies I even told her in the first place and is staying with him regardless , my brother has offered no support and without saying so, obviously doesn't believe me and my sister has tried to stay neutral (which is just as frustrating as someone who doesn't believe you). I have allowed my mum to see my daughter for a few hours once a week but that is the extent of my contact with her now.
Your SIL needs to be as prepared as possible for any outcome as there's no predicting her reaction...she should ideally stay somewhere else during the confrontation period as she will need a place of refuge to get away from the stress. In my opinion, confrontation is crucial to healing and it is a positive thing, regardless of the mother's reaction HOWEVER, counselling and external support (she is very lucky to have you and her siblings- I would kill for that!).

Laurie, my view is that your MIL needs to know asap. The longer she doesn't know when everyone else knows, the harder it will be for her to take.

Your SIL needs to know that she won't be hurting her mother by telling her. The stepfather is the hurter (abuser).

These things are never best kept a secret, the hurt just carries on for the victim.

Are you sure that your SIL doesn't want someone else to tell for her - maybe she can't find the words?

but on the other hand the SIL may be well able to move on with her feelings, and make progress by herself. in fact she might find it much easier to do so if she has limited the "upset" in her family.
or she might feel more able to do it in her own time.
it may not be her fault but she may well feel responsible if she tells her mother.
it is up to her, though, and it really isn't as simple as - if she tells her mother, it will be easier for her to move on.
it might not. it might be harder.

i think for your sil's sake, her mother needs to be told. she needs her mother's support, and has needed it for the last ten years. how her mother feels isnt the issue at all
however, tbh, for the mil's sake, i think it w ould be better if she never ever finds out. she has a life with this man. finding out will destroy not only that life, but her trust in herself. betrayal. his and hers of her dutyo f care for her dd. it will totally devvastate her. and to top it all, everyone else knew, but didnt tell her. so betrayl of trust there too.

so, if as you say, he is not a danger to anyone else, you need to decide whose side you want to be on. support the sil. help her build a life for herself and her future, whist destroying her mothers past. or maintain the status quo for mother in law, whilst leaving the younger sis to deal with the most awful awful thing.

catch 22. i feel terrible for you all. lots of positive vibes for you.

We have all offered to tell her and she's said that if/when she does tell her she wants dh and I around.

We all live close by. Also to answer other questions, they are very close, there is no way she won't be believed.

You couldn't get a closer mother and daughter She probably would have told her years ago if the stepfather hadn't quickly become disabled and so reliant on her mother. She has been protecting her mother for a long time.

I think it is incredibly naive to think that if she tells her mother, her mother will be supportive.
that may or may not happen.
her mother will be devastated, I imagine. she may or may not be able to support her daughter through that. she may or may not choose to.

it is up to the SIL. I would find it incredibly hard to be pressured into telling my mother in this situation. incredibly hard.

yes but it is not her job to 'limit the upset' for her family. or to feel responsible for telling her mother. i can't help but feel that on some level, allowing it to remain a secret, and allowing her to keep it secret, reinforces a possibly very implicit assumption that victims sometimes have that they have to 'protect' people from what has happened to them. thereby maintaining a feeling that they have some degree of responsibility for it. in my experience, progress is limited as long as a person continues to concern themselves more with how thier experience has affected other people, rather than focusing on themselves. that can also be seen as a fairly avoidant way to deal with the trauma.

Pukka, we have done nothing but be there for her the whole 18 months, we have not told her she must do anything. We have continued to point out that the people who know will not be letting their own children go round there and that this may become obvious.

Even with my dh and I, we live in the same area and we never go round there (I refuse to be civil/pretend). Poor mil must think I'm a right bitch to him and must wonder why I'm so pleased to see her when she comes round here.

Shortly after she told me I had to go to Christmas dinner as it had already been arranged. SIL was away but dh and I went. Stepfatherinlaw said something about sil being a whore because she had slept with her boyfriend I was very very rude to him, said various things about how i was sick of him being awful about her, that it was disgusting that he was calling her names. I said it very loudly as he had whispered the word whore to me.

"Don't call SIL a whore you awful man" - because I wanted the whole family to hear what he was saying to me.

Just trying to think this through:

You said earlier that it will all come out sooner or later because of a relative having a baby who won't want to visit because of the abuser. Are you sure the relative will break this covenant of silence you all are party to? It's a big responsibility to be the one.

If it is all going to come out then your SIL need not do anything, the 'axe blow' about to descend upon her mother won't be delivered by her and maybe that is for the best. And maybe that's what SIL wants? She won't be beset by that guilt being the one to devastate her mother - even though she had nothing to feel guilty for.

It may also allow her mother to leave this 'man' (something you suggested she wanted to anyway) without being forced to crisis point by SIL, presumably the kind of awful scene she is trying to avoid.

But to answer your OP, yes I'd want to know, particularly if I was the only one in ignorance. I would hope someone in the family would tell me.

No, the relative won't tell her but will just not visit.

Dh and I are also ttc'ing and we have also told sil that we would not take the baby round there (that is our boundary and our responsibility)

Yes, mil is indicating that she wants to leave him but is afraid of condemnation from the family as he is severely disabled. I think her knowing this will tip her over the edge very quickly into wanting to leave him. I don't think she will hesitate for a second (I think I know her pretty well)

how the mother deals with it is not totally the point. for the sil, if she discloses her experience to her mother, she has done all she can to be loyal/truthful to herself and her mum. if her mum does not accept that, then the sil will have to face that too, and yes that may not be easy, but that will be her reality and she will cope. i feel that that circumstance is easier to deal with, than a life of pretense and lies

Laurie, that's appalling, I don't know how you didn't tell there and then.
The man is a criminal. I would be wanting to make a report to the police. Have you suggested this to SIL?

I have suggested it(I used to work for family protection in the police) but she doesn't want to have to go through it/doesn't want to go through him denying it.

j&k I expect it really is the point for the SIL.
there is an implicit assumption that confronting the truth is always better than living with the present reality.
ime that is not necessarily, or even usually, the case.
the SIL may not want to risk being etranged from, or hurting her mother.
whether she should feel that is rather beside the point.

harpsi i'm not really talking about what she should feel, but what may be more adaptive for her in the long run. she is not living a present 'reality' is she? confronting the truth has to be better than living the presnt 'falsity'? she is also clearly estranged from her mother anyway in some rspects, no matter how close you may be to someone, if you arte carrying something like that with you, you are estranged from that person anyway. sorry i didn't use the word 'should' at all.

I would want to know. I would encourage and support my daughter in trying to get justice (and closure) by taking it to the appropriate authorities so that he can be charged and hopefully convicted. He needs to be held accountable and be forced to recognise that what he did was depraved and wrong

That sounds a bit glib - it's truly hard to know how you would react but I think that would be my response

"confronting the truth has to be better than living the presnt 'falsity'?"
is it? why?
to say she is "estranged" from her mother is simply untrue in any objective sense. she is close to her mother, she is protecting her mother.
I don't think she can be criticised for not wanting to speak to her mother about this.

The reality is, whether or not in an objective sense it is "not her job to 'limit the upset' for her family, or to feel responsible for telling her mother" she might well feel this way. and the reality is, she may well feel very very bad indeed. she may well become estranged from her mother. and she might not think that is worth that risk to face up to the truth.
I can't criticise her for it.

I've read a few posts down that your SIL wouldn't want to go down the legal route - however, I remember a televised interview with a woman who was abused as a child. She felt strongly that her father never admitted to himself that what he did was wrong, and indeed had 'normalised' it in his mind. But when he was tried and convicted he was forced to confront the truth about himself and his actions